The con was amazing. Both panels were standing room only with topnotch audiences. People actually stood in line for 30 minutes to get into a Monday afternoon panel with the word “feminism” in the title. Bravo, folks.

A new report that Michael B. Jordan will be playing Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, in Fox’s upcoming Fantastic Four reboot has once again sparked heated debate. Many are praising the color-blind casting choice as a sign of progress, while others espouse racism under the guise of upholding the ever-sacred source material (which is itself a product of 1950’s racism).

I’m not going to bother directly addressing all the racist arguments because they’ve already been discussed and discredited ad nauseam. (If you need that discussion, allow me to recommend starting with The 5 Most Insulting Defenses of Nerd Racism.)

However, I would like to take this opportunity to discuss the alleged progressiveness of color-blind casting. Is color-blind casting inherently a form of positive representation?

In celebration of Black History Month, I’m giving away copies of two of my favorite comics on the Journey Into Awesome Facebook page! First up is a new hardcover copy of Captain America: Truth (originally published as Truth: Red, White & Black) by Robert Morales (Captain America) and Kyle Baker (Why I Hate Saturn).

Dragon Con was amazing. Let me start by sending out a great big thank you to everyone who made it out to my panels. You all packed that conference room and were the best audience I’ve ever had the pleasure to speak to. On Saturday night, we even had a bunch of people hang out for an extra two hours after the panel officially “ended” to chat about gender, race, and sexuality in comics.

Kitty Pryde has a long history of drawing parallels between the plights of mutants and those of real life people of color (see X-Men: God Loves, Man Kill and New Mutants #45).

That’s why I was excited to see her speak up in All-New X-Men #13 to so masterfully address Havok’s infamous M-Word Speech. The monologue comes courtesy of Brian Michael Bendis and I can’t help but interpret it and its lack of counterpoint as explicit commentary directed to Rick Remender. Either way, it’s a great monologue and an even better point.